Owning your own home

Looks to me like the 45 deg section is necessary to get the bottom of the vertical flue 2.1m above the ground as specced.

The illustration was obviously done without knowing (or caring about) the height of the exit from the wall.

Re scaffolding, can you call them, tell them if they don’t take it away by X date you will assume it’s abandoned and they don’t want it, advertise it and sell it, keeping the money as storage cost / giving it to the donkey sanctuary / as you wish?

High risk approach given how scaffolders are generally described, but might work.

lol

Pipe run inside could be made longer assuming there’s no obstruction. That way you get less heat loss up the flue assuming it’s a single skin pipe internally. Will look a bit weird though if it’s exiting say a two foot below the ceiling rather than 2/3 the way up the wall.

Maybe they just drilled in the wrong spot. Would be interesting to see an internal photo.

Is there a reason you're not considering Stow Brothers?

We bought through them and actually, aside from the price we had to pay, it was a good experience. We were possibly lucky as the manager of the branch handled our purchase, but she was incredibly helpful during a somewhat traumatic buying experience (probate house, weird sellers, crap solicitors and an exchange at 5pm on the day we were supposed to be moving and the stamp duty holiday was meant to end). Honestly she felt like the only ally we had in the process, we actually sent her a thank you email afterwards. Happy to PM you her details.

More importantly as you'd be selling, they know Walthamstow well, they know how to get lots of people to view your house and they know how to whip up a frenzy and get the best price!

"Excuse me Mr. Knownforunpredictableoutburstsofrageandretribution, please take your shit away or I'll sell it and pocket the money. What's that? Why yes, it is currently outside the place where I live and you know where that is and how to get in through a first floor window, why do you ask?"

Exactly

Never met a scaffie who wasn't to the eyeballs with wizz Thursday through Tuesday.

Do not annoy scaffolders, they are mental and dngaf.

Personally I wouldn't use them because their senior management presided over this :

https://www.thehrdirector.com/legal-updates/legal-updates-2023/estate-agent-awarded-30891-unfair-dismissal-employers-tried-get-rid/

I had this issue with scaffolders subcontracted by my builder a year or so ago. Basically I just raged internally and chased my builder twice daily for three weeks till the tossers deigned to remove it.

Lesson learnt though - I withheld 25% of my builder's fee until it was gone. That's apparently not enough - next time I won't pay the builder until it's on the truck driving away.

the only EA firm I have a personal grudge against is Foxton, but in general I have low expectations of them as a profession and still expect to be disappointed.

Certainly the take home problem I have from the litigation I have linked to re the Stow brothers, is do I want to risk any professional I engage to do any of the following:

1) be prepared to forge documentation
2) be dishonest
3) discriminate against their staff
4) treat their clients with distain

If you agree I suggest you weigh all that up when choosing your agent.

You’re better off finding a neighbour who wants some scaffold and bunging the crew some cash to move it over.

Can't quite believe I'm typing the words but I've just woken up in my new house for the first time. The wind is blowing through the trees. I can't smell traffic. We had our first meal in the house yesterday, sitting on the sofa cushions. It is such a contrast from the last six months of stress and hell.

I nearly went nuts during this process. Without the good advice and support from people in this thread, I'm not sure I'd have made it to the end. Thank you.

Awesome! Well done.

Congrats! Was going to ask if this has been resolved

I just found out my buyer's solicitors do not yet have a signed
contract or mortgage deed or deposit

You’ll forget the stress of the last 48 hours pretty soon, I’m sure it’ll even become a funny story. Enjoy your new gaff!

We have our own “funny story” trying to transfer £100k to our solicitor two hours before completion cause they’d forgotten to ask for it.

Nice one! Enjoy it.

In time you may even come to be grateful for your buyers for trying to chip off money at the last minute - it will help assuage any guilt you might otherwise feel for selling a place with some of the problems that made you want to leave it.

Congrats! What an epic saga - I feel like your housing story over the last few years has probably been one of the worst on here. Bear in mind that in all seriousness you will probably need some time to recuperate from the stress and trauma so I suppose what I'm saying is that you should 'be kind to yourself' over the next six months, as much as I hate that phrase...

I have low expectations of them as a profession

100%, but in my experience expectations are so low that the plus is they can be easily exceeded. We bought our first place with Keatons who were fine, sold with the Modern House who were obviously great (natch) then bought with Stow Bros, and never had a problem with any of them.

Generally speaking the real problem with property transactions is conveyancing and the negative result of solicitors working on way too many files because people won't pay more for it, but I've gone on about that plenty of times before.

I imagine the estate agent industry is full of cases like the one @princeperch linked to, and aside from the document forging stuff like that has happened in every industry I've ever worked in.

If you can afford to reduce the amount you get for your place on principle good for you, but it's not a position I've ever been in given the sums involved. Personally I would go for the agent who knows your market best and who will get the most for your property.

excellent news! :)

@ReekBlefs

Congratulations!

just superb news.

So pleased for you. Enjoy the new home!

Congratulations! there is a healing process to go through and after our nightmare of attempting to move documented in gory detail in this thread we are still not quite recovered but that’s because of a 6 month long 3 month refurb project that followed.
The wounds do heal and despite saying ‘never again’ we probably will but it simply can’t be as bad.